Ricky Dobbs has two big items on his bucket list. One is to beat visiting Air Force on Saturday. That’s certainly doable. Dobbs is Navy’s dynamic junior quarterback who nearly led the upset of Ohio State in this year’s opener and came off the bench to almost beat Notre Dame last year. In less than three quarters against SMU a year ago, he rushed for 224 yards.
The second item? Oh, he wants to be the president of the United States in 2040.
“If I was president right now, the first thing I’d do, the way the world is today, I’d probably make a law where every day you have to brighten someone’s day,” Dobbs said from Annapolis, Md., on Tuesday. “I believe, in a lot of cases, other people look at America as big and bad and we try to run everything and don’t have a heart.
“To have someone do something like that, maybe we do care.”
He said he thinks President Barack Obama is doing his part to change the nation’s image. He likes how Obama is reaching out to other cultures rather than alienating them.
The only thing Dobbs didn’t like was that Obama beat him to the title as America’s first African-American president.
“I really like him,” Dobbs said. “I definitely don’t feel any negative way about being the second black president behind him. He’s a great man. He’s sort of the standard right now. He’s the type of man I strive to be.”
This is why he had so many mixed emotions on Nov. 4. He sat on his bed at the academy watching the election on TV, and when Obama was projected the winner, he called his grandfather. He called his grandmother. He called his mother.
“They said they’re blessed to see this day,” Dobbs said. “They didn’t think it would happen. Then I hear some things yelled out the windows, ‘Communist!’ People were yelling. Guys were saying they’re not going to take their commission. They were moving out of the United States.”
They weren’t teammates. They were just a few random students, like on any other campus. But it was still distressing for Dobbs, a kid from a one-parent home in Douglasville, Ga., who was one wayward summer away from drifting off into a life of drugs.
The Naval Academy helped shape him, helped make him believe in America and God even more than he already did. He still hasn’t lost the faith in Navy, and it’s not just because he has already rushed for nine touchdowns and thrown for three more.
He remembers later on election night walking with a friend past another student’s room. He was playing Young Jeezy’s rap song, “My President is Black.”
“We asked why he was playing it,” Dobbs said. “He said he wasn’t but when he heard the racial slurs, he played it to tick them off even more.”
Actually, the academy picked up where Dobbs’ uncle left off. Dobbs moved in with Thomas Cobb, his youth football coach, in the fourth grade after he found himself around drugs a little too much for an impressionable third-grader.
Cobb gave him guidance and discipline. He had rules for going out. Dobbs couldn’t go to parties. He had to turn in his cellphone by 9 p.m. to do his homework.
“At first, it was tough,” Dobbs said. “There was no room to rebel with him. But after a while I became used to it. Later, I could go to parties and stuff, and I didn’t want to go.”
Navy was the launch pad for the rest of his life. Despite being a successful run ‘n’ shoot gunslinger for Douglas County High, Dobbs was recruited only as a wide receiver and defensive back by the likes of Wake Forest and Southern Mississippi. Only Navy and its triple option wanted him at quarterback.
If Air Force is going to win, it had better stop Dobbs. Ohio State couldn’t. He rushed for 83 yards and two touchdowns and threw for 156 yards and two more scores as the Buckeyes barely escaped, 31-27.
Hey, it’ll read well in Campaign 2040.
Hit with a full-scale investigation
It’s one thing to give New Mexico its first 0-4 start in 15 years. It’s another to punch out an assistant coach. The school is going beyond athletic director Paul Krebs’ wrist-slap reprimand and launching a full-scale investigation into first-year coach Mike Locksley’s altercation with assistant J.B. Gerald.
Gerald, the Lobos’ wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator, came with Locksley, below, from Illinois, where Gerald was offensive quality control coach and Locksley was the offensive coordinator.
Known as a “young Locksley” by some rival recruiters, Gerald reportedly had a confrontation with Locksley during training camp. It came to a head Sept. 20 when Locksley reportedly punched Gerald in the mouth, splitting his upper lip.
Gerald filed a police report and hasn’t been to practice since. The incident has infuriated faculty and fans, and faculty senate president Douglas Fields told the Albuquerque Journal that an example must be set.
“Otherwise,” he said, “you’re giving the message that as long as you’re stressed and underperforming, it’s OK to hit somebody.”
John Henderson, The Denver Post
